Crowdfunding sites like CircleUp, Indiegogo and Kickstarter are a form of social media geared toward fundraising. And a crowdfunding campaign landing page, in simple terms, is a low cost content management and e-commerce system. Social channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube are natural extensions for crowdfunding campaign outreach because friends, family members, and colleagues use social -- and these people are often early supporters.
But social media is difficult to use for targeting and managing subscriber communications, especially for people you’re not engaged with on social channels. So what should crowdfunding campaign teams do? That big stack of business cards and LinkedIn email addresses may be a pot of gold.
Speaking from experience as both a crowdfunding supporter and campaign leader, most crowdfunding campaigns are not effective with cross-channel opt-ins and communication. This negatively impacts crowdfunding results. Consider implementing an email marketing strategy before launching your crowdfunding campaign.
Search Engine Watch recently talked with Kyle Lacy of ExactTarget to discuss these issues. The conversation focused on opt-ins, channel preferences, segmentation, and how to avoid becoming a penalized spammer.
Erick Mott: Is using email to request contributions for a crowdfunding campaign (especially consumer products where a contribution is a "pre-order") considered spam?
Kyle Lacy: It all depends on how the email address was acquired at the beginning of the relationship. An email solicitation is completely normal and encouraged if the individual agreed to be sent email in the first place.
Through our Subscribers, Fans, and Followers research report, Channel Preference 2012, we actually found that 77% of consumers prefer to receive communication via email when it is a solicitation or promotional item.
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